Aldiss, Brian - The Canopy of Time

VIP免费
2024-12-24 0 0 1.32MB 77 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
THE CANOPY OF TIME
". . . fantasy rather than science fiction: stories of a pathologically murderous throw-back who may never be permanently
executed in a world where the dead can be restored to life; of robots trying to build a social system of their own on purely logical
principles, which collapses for want of compassion; of a boy who weaves old men into his death dreams."
Times Literary Supplement
"In this collection of stories we look in on the human race from time to time during the next few million years, and observe it in a
variety of phases—all but extinct, spread out round the galaxy, in progressive moods, or static moods, but until the end the same
old human race, sometimes funny, sometimes sad. Anyone who likes to see an intelligent imagination weave people and ideas
together and finish the result with craftsmanship, should enjoy The Canopy of Time"
John Wyndham, The Listener
"Devilishly clever and compulsive."
Kenneth Allsop, Daily Mail
"— Take us far from the here-and-now into regions of sharply-flavoured eeriness."
Kingsley Amis, The Observer
Also by Brian Aldiss and available in the NEL series
EARTHWORKS
THE INTERPRETER
SPACE, TIME AND NATHANIEE
THE AIRS OF EARTH
THE DARK LIGHT YEARS
The Canopy of Time
Brian W. Aldiss
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY
TIMES MIRROR
For Tony and Am Priet
with love
fe case you don't get a review copy
First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Limited in 1959 © Brian Wilson Aldiss 1959
First Four Square Edition 1963 Reprinted 1964 (twice)
REISSUED IN THIS NEL EDITION MAY 1971 Reprinted July 1973
Conditions of Sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired
out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
NEL Books are published by
New English Library Limited from Barnard's Inn, Holborn, London E.C.I, Made and printed in Great Britain by Hunt Barnard Printing
Ltd., Aylesbury,
Bucks,
45000708 I Contents
three's A cloud 7
all the world's tears 18
who can replace a man? 3i
blighted profile 42
judas danced 53
O ishrail! 69
incentive 85
gene hive 101
secret of a mighty city 123
they shall inherit 142
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
visiting amoeba 155
Author's note
if these stories are read in the order they are published here, an observant reader may notice certain links be-tween
them. They are in fact all slices off the enormous carcass of the future, arranged chronologically from a date a
century or two ahead right up to the end of the galaxy.
The short notes between stories are intended as tenuous connecting links, which may be ignored. Each
story was written to stand by itself and has been revised since its original publication in magazines or anthologies.
Acknowledgements and my thanks are due to the editors of Authentic for "Visiting Amoeba" (previously "What
Triumphs"); Infinity for "Who Can Replace a Man?"; Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for "Secret of a Mighty City"
(previously "Have your Hatreds Ready"); Nebula for "Gene Hive" (previously "Journey to the Interior") and
"They Shall Inherit"; New Worlds for "O Ishrail!", "Incentive" and "Three's a Cloud" (previously
"Unbeaten Track"); Pick of Today's Short Stories 9 and Nebula for "All the World's Tears"; Science Fantasy for
"Blighted Profile"; and Star Science Fiction and Science Fantasy for "Judas Danced".
Three's a Cloud
just by accident, Clemperer had shaved when he got up at noon. Consequently, he was looking not too much the
tramp when he drifted into his destiny at Karpen-kario's, the Greek place on the waterfront, at nine in the
evening.
Clemperer knew nobody at Karpenkario's place. That was its attraction for him. He was alone in the world and he
knew it. He hated the bars full of false friend-ship, where acquaintances who had seen him only half a dozen times
before in their lives, slapped his back and cried, "Come on, old pal, haven't seen you in a long time; how about a
drink?" Equally, Clemperer hated loneliness. But at least loneliness was clean and honour-able.
He bought a double whisky at the bar. He had already downed four elsewhere. Instead of drinking where the other
people were drinking, he carried the glass with him, pushing through the crowd, which consisted mainly of sailors,
and made for the quiet restaurant behind. The air was clearer here, reminding Clemperer of his stale old
wisecrack about his not being able to see unless the atmosphere was full of cigarette smoke.
Only one of the restaurant tables was occupied. A man and woman, strangers to Clemperer, sat at it.
That was the beginning of everything. Clemperer did what he never did : he went and sat down with the man and
the woman, instead of choosing an empty table.
"You might like a look at the menu," the man said, 7
banding him over a typed sheet smilingly, "Fortunately the food here is better than the typing."
It did not hit Clemperer all at once, because he was partially drunk, but the sensation he felt was as if he had arrived
home. That was odd : Clemperer had no home. Four years earlier, on his fortieth birthday, he had flung up the bachelor
flat he had hitherto called home, and the Motivation Research job which paid for it, and had gone out into the world,
wandering from town to town in search of what he privately called his destiny.
He raised the whisky, paused, lowered it again, setting the glass with ponderous care on to the table.
"Your coffee sounds good," he told the girl. "I must have a cup. It'll help to clear my head."
He had meant to say "smells good", not "sounds good". It was the sort of slight verbal slip he
often caught himself making, much to his annoyance. In this case, it rudely implied that the girl was drinking noisily;
yet by her smile she appeared to have grasped his real meaning. How seldom you found anyone like that, Clemperer
reflected.
He ordered a big jug of coffee, offering the others a cup, which they both accepted.
Meanwhile, he looked them over carefully. There was nothing extraordinary about them. They looked faintly
unhappy. One sat one side of the table, one the other, and their hands met on the polished oak. The man was about
Clemperer's age, but better preserved, obviously more prosperous. He looked as if he might still have a hope. Behind
his spectacles, his grey eyes held a wealth of friendliness.
The girl was more striking. She was not pretty, but neat enough to be very attractive. At a guess she was
twenty-one. Her dark hair was short, without curl, while in her long, squaw face was set a pair of the darkest, saddest
eyes Clemperer had ever encountered. In her was some unguessable grief, as thick as fog—yet now she was happy.
At some time, then or later, he found their names were Spring and Alice.
It occurred to him that he might offer some sort of apology for sitting down at their table without invita-
8
tion, little as that apology seemed needed. When he spoke, his diffident tongue again betrayed him.
"I didn't mean to intrude," he said, "I know very well that three's a cloud."
They took it as a trouvaille.
"There you have it," Alice said, peering at him through the wigwam of her vision. "What's more
homo-geneous than a cloud?"
"C.f. a cloud of unknowing," Spring said, "floating along in a mystery."
"I really meant to say 'cloud'," Clemperer admitted, making his slip again. Then he gave up. Perhaps the dark side of
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
his mind knew best; perhaps he really had intended to say "cloud".
From the Greek waiter, he ordered a dish of Arab Kuftides, with spaghetti and chile sauce. It was not the kind of
thing Clemperer usually did; he rarely ate after midday—it was just throwing good food away on a bad ulcer. His
current theory was to try and drown the damned thing in alcohol.
That reminded him about the untouched whisky; he called the waiter and got it taken away.
"I'm sorry if I smell of whisky," he said. "Once you start drinking whisky you smell of it all through. I'll sober up
soon."
"There's no hurry," Spring said.
Spring did not speak much. He did not eat much, though occasionally he stirred the dish before him with his fork.
Alice was stubbing out her cigarette ends in the mashed potato on her plate. Now and again she mopped her forehead
with a tissue from the carton of Kleenex beside her. Both of them seemed to be ... waiting.
"They're odd people", Clemperer thought, feeling once more that warm sensation of being home. He had
been aware of his own oddity for too long.
"Drinking's only a way of trying to get under the normal hard surface of loving," he said apologetically. He had
intended to say "living", not "loving", but again he sensed they both understood what he meant. "Some people
only know that way of doing it. What I mean is, you can go right through life without really becoming
intimate with another person, without really touching
9
their identity with your identity—true identity. When you're stewed in drink, you at least swamp yourself in your own
identity, and then you don't need anyone else so much."
And he thought in startlement, "Why the hell am I talking this sort of stuff? I've never talked like this to
anyone, never mind to complete -- " But he could not
bring himself to think the word "strangers". Whatever they were, they weren't strangers, not now he had once met
them.
"When you're drunk or when you're dead you don't need anyone so much," Alice said, seeming to do half the
talking with her eyes. "But otherwise, the trouble is we none of us have a true identity until we have some-one to
share it with—someone capable of sharing it."
"If people would only consciously realize it," Spring said, "that's all anyone spends their life doing: looking for the
right person to reveal their identity to."
"It's a hard search always," the girl went on, looking at Spring. "The compensation is that when you find that kind
of person, you know. Nobody need say a thing. It just feels right."
"I'm really intruding on you true," Clemperer pro-tested, not that he felt that way at all inside. His tongue had turned
"two" into "true".
"You know you're not," Spring and Alice replied to-gether. "Can't you trust your instinctive responses?"
"I'm forty-four," Clemperer said, smiling wearily; "I've grown out of the habit."
To his mild horror, he began telling them the whole story of his life. It was an ordinary enough tale, at least until the
revolutionary moment four years ago, when he had entirely broken with his old way of life : a tale of continuous inner
discontent. Clemperer could not stop it; it all came bubbling out, and the grey eyes and the great black ones listened
carefully to every word.
At last he finished. The uneaten remnants of his meal had grown cold; Alice's glass was crammed full of
tissues. Clemperer made a gesture of self-deprecation.
"I don't know why I tell you all this," he murmured.
"Because now you tell us," Alice said, "you see it all in a different light. You can grasp now that your life did not
happen the way you thought it did at the time."
10
"You're right!'' Clemperer exclaimed "All my past has been heading towards this moment, this moment of
revelation . . . this puts a meaning to it. . . ."
For so much else he wished to say, he could uncover no words. He saw them all as icebergs floating on a great sea;
the sea was . . . being, having, knowing; and under all his new happiness ran a river connecting him with them. A vast
restlessness overcame him. He wanted to run, sing, wave his arms. Here at last was a moment for which to
celebrate and be alive in every cell.
"Let's go outside," Spring suggested. "Every so often I have to air my sinuses."
"That's what I was going to say," Clemperer ex-claimed.
"Of course," Spring said, laughing. "It's nice to have someone to do these little things for you, eh?"
They pushed their way out into the night. A bluff summer wind blew along the sea front. The clustered dinghies
rocked contentedly by the jetty. All along the harbour wall, the sea cast up its spray at the feet of the white lamp
standards.
Clemperer seemed to experience neither the night nor the gale, Alice had linked herself between the two
men like a catalyst, her young squaw face mysterious in shadow. She was frightening—because she was eating her
heart out, and Clemperer was now part of that heart.
"I've got it" he exclaimed suddenly. "It's a gestalt! We're a gestalt! You know what I mean—the whole we represent
is something greater than the sum of our parts. We've combined, and something has happened beyond us."
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
They looked at him curiously. For the first time, he had surprised them, filling their countenances with wonder. All
three were conscious of saying many things in silence,
"We—Alice and I— thought we were complete until you arrived," Spring said gravely. "Directly you turned up,
-we realized that was not so. You are a vital part of whatever it is. You'd better try and explain your con-tribution."
11
He was so happy! He was not just the junior part-ner they were allowing to accompany them.
They were equals: his share was one third.
"Let me tell you this first of all," he began, "although you being you, it may not need saying. Usually—in fact, up
till this very evening—I was never the sort of person you are now seeing. A lot of people are different in the
company of different people, but now I'm really different. Usually, I hate people—if a man or woman becomes
my friend, they do it the hard way, the barriers have to go down one by one, and there are lots of barriers.
You two by-passed all of them, somehow. And another thing, at this time of night, the acute pain-joy of living flares
up in me. . . ."
"We're all Night People here," Alice interposed gently.
"... and so I generally arrange to be well stewed by now, to keep the voices out. Usually I have an odd impediment
in my speech, sort of a Freudian slip, which has now completely left me, as if my old brain cogs have got their teeth
back in. I have stopped saying the wrong words—I've found locks I want my keys to fit. Then, for another thing, I
heartily distrust mysticism, emotion or any such clack as I—we—are now talking. It's sud-denly no longer clack; it's
the one real thing I've ever known, to be walking here with you."
"Of course you're surprised," Spring said. "It is sur-prising. It's staggering! When it first happened to Alice and me,
we thought it was just love. (Why that 'just' ?) Now you come along and prove it's something more again."
". . . as we had begun to suspect," Alice concluded. It was dreamlike the way they each supplemented the other's
meaning. "Tell us about the gestalt. Expand and expound!"
"I've never been content because I've only just stumbled on you," Clemperer said. "Maybe all
discon-tented persons in the world are just waiting for their Stumbling Time. ... I can feel—I can feel that we
three are a big thing, bigger than three people; we are in some way aloof from time and space. As you said, this
meeting has had the power to alter my past; prob-
12
ably it can alter our future, too. This thing has never been described. It's not telepathy, for instance, although feeling
alike we shall obviously think along similar lines. It's not a menage a trois or what's usually implied by the term,
although basic sexuality may provide some of the binding force. If it has been found before, the finders have kept
quiet about it. We are treading what is vir-tually a ,new trail, a.n unbeaten track. We can't know where it leads ... until
we arrive."
He went on talking, elucidating for the benefit of all, carried away by his vision. As they strolled along the windy
front, the lights overhead seemed to float by like suns, each casting its starlight slowly on their faces.
At last Clemperer broke off.
"It's very late," he said, suddenly apologetic again. "You know it's amazing how I seem to know all the im-portant
things about the two of you, but none of the trivial ones which everyone sets such store by. Don't you want to get
home or something now?"
"We be but poor holiday-makers, sire," Spring said, with an odd mock-lightness. "Our homes are far apart."
He pointed over the dark sea, where a yacht lay at anchor, its lights rocking gently with the swell.
"See the yacht? Our berths are there. Alice and I only met because a mutual friend—the owner of the yacht—
invited us for a cruise round the coast with several other people. I think we will stay ashore tonight; we can
board first thing in the morning; they won't worry about us ... and someone there will look after my wife."
Those last few quietly spoken words told Clemperer everything he needed to know about the pool of sorrow in
Alice's eyes; the subject was not referred to again between them.
"Karpenkario's stays open all night," Clemperer said simply.
They walked back in silence, a weird, loud silence which felt more important than all the talk. Occasion-ally, Alice
would use a tissue on her forehead; letting it go, she would watch it sail bravely away on the increas-ing wind—along,
round and up, right over the rooftops of the poor houses which faced the sea.
At Karpenkario's, they managed to get a small back 13
room. It contained a card table, chairs, and litter on the floor; but it was better than going back to Clemperer's room. He
had deliberately not suggested that. A vision of its unmade bed, the empty whisky bottles peering blindly from the
ever-open wardrobe, the clothes on the floor, a pat of butter festering on the wash-basin, rose before him, provoking
only a sad smile from him. All that belonged to the aimless past. He could no more have taken Alice and Spring there
than a snake could resume its sloughed skin.
They ordered coffee and began to talk again. Endless talk, the river running swift and sure beneath it.
The gestalt became more intense as the night wore on, till it seemed to envelop them like a collapsed tent, almost
smothering them. Outside, the wind howled and banged down a side passage, sounding dustbins and charging loose
doors, lamenting over rooftops. It grew to symbolize for them the new power lurking just beyond their conscious
thresholds, until it seemed that within themselves there might be a force which could whip away their self-control like
straw—for ever.
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
They became slightly afraid. But chiefly they were afraid because they no longer knew what they repre-sented, and
their old, safe selves had been lost eternally on the midnight tide.
"This gestalt," Alice said, at one point in time, "what do you think we can do with it?"
"Or what is it able to do with us?" added Spring.
"Is it a force of good or evil?" asked Clemperer.
"I think it is beyond good or evil," the girl said, peer-ing down squaw-faced into the depths of some un-imaginable
well. "Whatever it may be, it is beyond all the laws and rules. What's usually called . . . super-natural. . . ."
Now it was as if they were frozen together. Tired, cold, vitiated, they sprawled closely across the table, moving no
more than the patient alligator which awaits its prey. They looked like bundles of old clothes.
"There's something we—it—can do," Clemperer said. "I can feel it, but I can't define it."
"It's only function is to bind us always," Spring said, almost sharply, "to hold us together wherever we are,
whatever happens. And what could be more valuable?"
14
"We are Night People," the girl murmured, "At least we can always suffer together."
Then they spoke no more, and the wind howled with-out stirring them, scream, scream, screaming beyond the brick
beyond the room beyond their unity. Clemperer was asleep but not asleep : in his mind's corner, he heard their last
words repeated over and over—those words which would later prove so very laden with meaning: "We can always
suffer together .... Its function is to bind us always. . . . Wherever we are, whatever happens ... it will hold us
together . . . always."
Each of them faded into a portion of the same trance, as dawn malingered in like moonlight.
She stood on the quayside with Spring, smudging one last tissue over her complexion. They had to get back to the
yacht; the owner expected them—he was going to sail round Jedder Island today, whatever the weather. They would
be back in port by nightfall; they would meet again then. Behind them, a ferryman waited to pilot them back over the
rocking waters to the yacht.
In the tension of the moment, Clemperer found him-self using conventional phrases of farewell. It did not matter.
Whatever he or they did would never matter; each would always understand; their faith was limitless; the last barriers
had gone with the night.
He touched both their cheeks with his, the greasy ones, the grey, stubbly ones. Contact with them almost
choked him. He loved them infinitely. They were gentle people, understanding, accepting, entirely open to the wounds
of the world.
They went off in the boat. The bully morning air blus-tered about Alice's dark head. There was a lack of bitter-ness
in parting; it was not a real parting. Yet Clemperer felt defeated. He had said, "We are in some way aloof from time and
space," and now it seemed obviously untrue. To know nothing—that was existence. Clem-perer turned away, heading
wearily back to his room.
He slept.
At five in the afternoon, he woke screaming. A pane of glass in his window had shattered. He sat up on his
frowsty bed, unable to orientate himself. At first he
15
believed himself drowning. The waters had been pour-ing over him, lashing his face. His lungs had been
clotted with spray.
Clemperer rose dazedly, staggering off the bed.
The wind had smashed his window. Dying at day-break, the gale had now goaded itself into a full-size storm,
cannonading in from the sea over the supine town.
Something else was also wrong, something he felt inside. Clemperer was fully dressed, even to his overcoat. Taking
a brief gulp of water from the tap, washing it round his tired mouth, he hurried from the house. It was strange
not to wake in a whisky haze, strange to wake to a purpose. Spring and Alice were in trouble, danger had them.
Hurrying down the narrow sloping streets, he arrived at the harbour. Directly he saw the people lining the
sea wall, he knew; indeed, he had known before. Every-one stared out to sea, most silent, some shouting and
pointing. As he ran past them, Clemperer caught salty crumbs of talk : a, yacht was in difficulties, the lifeboat was out,
the Jedder Current made a rescue awkward.
He ran up the long hill to the highest point of the cliffs, running as he had not run for years, running like
one possessed.
From the top, Jedder Island was a dark smudge on the skyline. The black clouds were busy erasing it with
their spurting bellies. Even as he looked, the rain rushed in across the sea, dashing for the coast, pat-terning
the breakers, striking him in the face with a handful of drops as hard as pebbles. In a moment, he was
drenched through his coat.
But in that last clear glimpse over the waters, Clem-perer had seen the yacht—seen it heel over and slide beneath
the churning surface. The lifeboat was nowhere near it, cut off by an angry race of green foam that marked the
Jedder Current. For anyone aboard the yacht, there could have been no hope of life; it had gone
down in an instant.
"Clemperer!" In his ears he heard their ringing cry as the craft went under, bearing them with it.
Now he was dead inside, neatly novocained of all sen-sation. The storm bellowed in his face, hissed in his ears,
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
16
but inside him was only silence as wearily he made his way downhill again, slipping and bumping down regard-lessly.
He walked in a dream, shouldering a passage through the sombre crowd still waiting by the harbour. Hardly conscious
of the direction he took, Clemperer crossed the road and padded wetly into Karpenkario's.
Alice and Spring were sitting waiting for him at their old table. They were wetter than he was, but they were smiling.
Over the centuries many wars were waged. They sent a fraction of mankind out into the universe seeking escape. On
earth, one particular conflict decimated man and rendered almost all his land barren; but as always the cruellest
conflict was between the individual and his environment
All the World's Tears
it was the last day of summer in the last year of the
eighty-third century a.d.
Humming to itself high in the stratosphere, a vane carried J. Smithlao, psychodynamician, over the 139th sector of
Ing Land. It began to dive. It sank down, finally levelling out to hover over Charles Gunpat's estate,
selecting its course without attention from Smithlao.
For Smithlao this was a routine errand. He had come, as Gunpat's psychodynamician, to administer a hate-brace to
the old man. His dark face was bored as he stared at the replica of outside on his telescreens. Oddly enough, as he did
so he caught a glimpse of a man approaching Gunpat's estate on foot.
"Must be a wild man," he muttered to himself.
Under the slowing vane, the landscape was as neat as a blueprint. The impoverished fields made
impeccable rectangles. Here and there, one robot machine or another kept nature to its own functional image
: not a pea podded without cybernetic supervision; not a bee bumbled among stamens without radar check being kept
18
of its course. Every bird had a number and a call sign, while among every tribe of ants marched the metallic teller
ants, telltaling the secrets of the nest back to base. When rain fell, it had its allocated dropping place. The old,
comfortable world of random factors had vanished under the pressure of hunger.
Nothing living lived without control. The countless populations of previous centuries had exhausted the soil. Only
the severest parsimony, coupled with ruthless regimentation, produced enough nourishment for the present sparse
population. The billions had died of star-vation; the hundreds who remained lived on starvation's brink.
In the sterile neatness of the landscape, Gunpat's estate looked like an insult. Covering five acres, it was a little
island of wilderness. Tall and unkempt elms fenced the perimeter, encroaching on the lawns and house. The house
itself, the chief one in Sector 139, was built of massive stone blocks. It had to be strong to bear the weight of the
servo-mechanisms which, apart from Gunpat and his mad daughter Ployploy, were its only occupants.
It was as Smithlao dropped below tree-level that he saw the human figure plodding towards the estate. For a
multitude of reasons, this was a very unlikely sight. The great material wealth of the world being now shared among
comparatively few people, nobody was poor enough to have to walk anywhere. Man's increasing hatred of Nature,
spurred by the notion it had betrayed him, would make such a walk purgatory-—unless the man was insane, like
Ployploy.
Dismissing the figure from his thoughts, Smithlao dropped the vane to a stretch of stone in front of the building.
He was glad to get down : it was a gusty day, and the piled cumulus through which he had descended had been full
of turbulence. Gunpat's house, with its sightless windows, its towers, its endless terraces, its unnecessary
ornamentation, its massive porch, lowered at him like a forsaken wedding cake.
His arrival stimulated immediate activity. Three-wheeled robots approached the vane from different directions,
swivelling light atomic weapons at it as they drew near. 19
Nobody, Smithlao thought, could get In here unin-vited. Gunpat was not a friendly man, even by the unfriendly
standards of his time; the disgrace of having a daughter like Ployploy had served to accentuate the moroser side of his
melancholy temperament.
"Say who you are," demanded the leading machine* It was ugly and flat, vaguely resembling a toad.
"I am J. Smithlao, psychodynamician to Charles Gun-pat," Smithlao replied; he had to go through this
procedure every visit. As he spoke, he revealed his face to the machine. It grunted to itself, checking picture
and information with its memory. Finally it said, "You are J. Smithlao, psychodynamician to Charles Gunpat. What
do you want?"
Cursing its monstrous slowness, Smithlao told the robot, "I have an appointment with Charles Gunpat for a
hate-brace at ten hours," and waited while that was digested.
"You have an appointment with Charles Gunpat for a hate-brace at ten hours," the robot finally confirmed.
"Come this way."
It wheeled about with surprising grace, speaking to the other two robots, reassuring them, repeating
mechanically to them, "This is J. Smithlao, psycho-dynamician to Charles Gunpat. He has an appointment with Charles
Gunpat for a hate-brace at ten hours," in case they had not grasped these facts.
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
Meanwhile, Smithlao spoke to his vane. The part of the cabin containing him detached itself from the rest and
lowered its wheels to the ground, becoming a mobile sedan. Carrying Smithlao, it followed the other robots towards
the big house.
Automatic screens came up, covering the windows as Smithlao moved into the presence of other humans. He could
only see and be seen now via telescreens. Such was the hatred (equals fear) man bore for his fellow man, he could not
tolerate their regarding him direct.
One following another, the machines climbed along the terraces, through the great porch where they were covered
in a mist of disinfectant, along a labyrinth of corridors, and so into the presence of Charles Gunpat.
20
Gunpat's dark face on the screen of his sedan showed only the mildest distaste for the sight of his
psycho-dynamician. He was usually as self-controlled as this : it told against him at his business meetings, where the
idea was to cow one's opponents by splendid displays of rage. For this reason, Smithlao was always summoned to
administer a hate-brace when something important loomed on the day's agenda.
Smithlao's machine manoeuvred him within a yard of his patient's image, much closer than courtesy required.
"I'm late," Smithlao began, matter-of-factly, "because I could not bear to drag myself into your offensive presence
one minute sooner. I hoped that if I left it long enough, some happy accident might have removed that stupid
nose from your—what shall I call it?-—face. Alas, it's still there, with its two nostrils sweeping like rat-holes into your
skull, I've often wondered, Gunpat, don't you ever catch your big feet in those holes and fall over?"
Observing his patient's face carefully, Smithlao saw only the faintest stir of irritation. No doubt about it, Gunpat was
a hard man to rouse. Fortunately, Smithlao was an expert in his profession; he proceeded to try the insult subtle.
"But of course you would never fall over," he pro-ceeded, "because you are too depressingly ignorant to
distinguish up from down. You don't even know how many robots make five. Why, when it was your turn to go to the
capital to the Mating Centre, you didn't even realize that was the one time a man has to come out from
behind his screen. You thought you could make love by tele! And what was the result? One dotty daughter .
. . one dotty daughter, Gunpat! Doesn't it make you weep? Think how your rivals at Automotion must titter at that,
sunny boy. 'Potty Gunpat and his dotty daughter,' they'll be saying. 'Can't control your genes,' they'll be
saying."
The taunts were having their desired effect. A flush spread over the image of Gunpat's face.
"There's nothing wrong with Ployploy except that she's a recessive—you said that yourself!" he snapped.
He was beginning to answer back; that was a good sign. His daughter was always a soft spot in his armour.
21
"A recessive!" Smithlao sneered. "How far back can you recede ? She's gentle, do you hear me, you with -he hair in
your ears? She wants to love?" He bellowed with ironic laughter. "Oh, it's obscene, Gunnyboy! She couldn't
hate to save her life. She's no better than a savage. She's worse than a savage, she's mad!"
"She's not mad," Gunpat said, gripping both sides of his screen. At this rate, he would be primed for the conference
in ten more minutes.
"Not mad?" the psychodynamician asked, his voice assuming a bantering note. "No, Ployploy's not mad: the
Mating Centre only refused her the right even to breed, that's all. Imperial Government only refused her the right to
televote, that's all.- United Traders only refused her a Consumption Rating, that's all. Education Inc only restricted her
to beta recreations, that's all. She's a prisoner here because she's a genius, is that it? You're crazy, Gunpat, if you don't
think that girl's stark, staring looney. You'll be telling me next, out of that grotesque, flapping mouth of yours, that she
hasn't got a white face."
Gunpat made gobbling sounds.
"You dare to mention that!" he gasped. "And what if her face is—that colour?"
"You ask such fool questions, it's hardly worth whfle~ bothering with you," Smithlao said mildly. "Your
trouble, Gunpat, is that your big bone head is totally incapable of absorbing one single simple historical fact. Ployploy
is white because she is a dirty little throwback. Our ancient enemies were white. They occupied this part of the globe,
Ing Land and You-Rohp, until our ancestors rose from the East and took from them the ancient privileges they
had so long enjoyed at our expense. Our ancestors intermarried with such of the defeated as survived, right?
"In a few generations, the white strain was obliterated, diluted, lost. A white face has not been seen on
earth since before the terrible Age of Over-Popula-tion : fifteen hundred years, let's say, to be generous. And then
—then little Lord recessive Gunpat throws one up neat as you please. What did they give you at Mating Centre,
sunny boy, a cave-woman?" 22
Gunpat exploded in fury, shaking his fist at the screen.
"You're sacked, Smithlao," he snarled. "This time you've gone too far, even for a dirty, rotten psycho! Get out! Go
on, get out, and never come back again! You've shot your bolt in this house!"
Abruptly, he bellowed to his auto-operator to switch him over to the conference. He was just in a ripe mood to deal
with Automotion and its fellow crooks.
As Gunpat's irate image faded from the screen, Smithlao sighed and relaxed. The hate-brace was accom-plished. It
was the supreme compliment in his profes-sion to be dismissed by a patient at the end of a session; Gunpat would be
the keener to re-engage him next time. All the same, Smithlao felt no triumph. In his calling, a thorough exploration of
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
human psychology was needed; he had to know exactly the sorest points in a man's make-up. By playing on those
points deftly enough, he could rouse the man to action.
Without being roused, men were helpless prey to lethargy, bundles of rag carried round by machines. The ancient
drives had died and left them.
Smithlao sat where he was, gazing into both past and future.
In exhausting the soil, man had exhausted himself. The psyche and a vitiated topsoil could not exist
simul-taneously; it was as simple and as logical as that.
Only the failing tides of hate and anger lent man enough impetus to continue at all. Else, he was just a dead hand
across his mechanized world.
"So this is how a species becomes extinct!" thought Smithlao, and wondered if anyone else had thought it. Perhaps
Imperial Government knew all about it, but was powerless to do anything; after all, what more could you do than was
being done ?
Smithlao was a shallow man—inevitably in a caste-bound society so weak that it could not face itself. Hav-ing
discovered the terrifying problem, he set himself to forget it, to evade its impact, to dodge any personal implications it
might have. With a grunt to his sedan, he turned about and ordered himself home.
Since Gunpat's robots had already left, Smithlao 23
travelled back alone the way he had come. He was trundled outside and back to the vane, standing silent below the
elms.
Before the sedan incorporated itself back into the vane, a movement caught Smithlao's eye. Half concealed by a
veranda, Ployploy stood against a corner of the house. With a sudden impulse of curiosity, Smithlao got out of the
sedan. The open air, besides being in motion, stank of roses and clouds and green things turning dark with the
thought of autumn. It was frightening for Smithlao, but an adventurous impulse made him go on.
The girl was not looking in his direction; she peered towards the barricade of trees which cut her off from the world.
As Smithlao approached, she moved round to the rear of the house, still staring intently. He fol-lowed with
caution, taking advantage of the cover afforded by a small plantation. A metal gardener nearby continued to
wield shears along a grass verge, unaware of his existence.
Ployploy now stood at the back of the house. The wind that rustled her long dress blew leaves against
her. It sighed round the weird and desolate garden like fate at a christening, ruining the last of the roses. Later, the
tumbling pattern of petals might be sucked from paths, lawn and patio by the steel gardener; now, it made a tiny tide
about her feet.
Extravagant architecture overshadowed Ployploy. Here a rococo fancy of ancient Italy had mingled with a Chinese
genius for fantastic portal and roof. Balus-trades rose and fell, stairs marched through circular arches, grey and azure
eaves swept almost to the ground. But all was sadly neglected: Virginia creeper, already hinting at its glory to come,
strove to pull down the marble statuary; troughs of rose petals clogged every sweeping staircase. And all this formed
the ideal back-ground for the forlorn figure of Ployploy.
Except for her delicate pink lips, her face was utterly pale. Her hair was utterly black; it hung straight,
secured only once at the back of her head, and then falling in a tail to her waist. She looked mad indeed, her
melancholy eyes peering towards the great elms as if they would scorch down everything in their line of
24
vision. Smithlao turned to see what she stared at so compellingly.
The wild man he had observed from the air was just breaking through the thickets round the elm boles.
A sudden rain shower came down, rattling among the dry leaves of the shrubbery. Like a spring shower, it was over
in a flash; during the momentary downpour, Ploy-ploy never shifted her position, the wild man never looked up. Then
the sun burst through, cascading a pattern of elm shadow over the house, and every flower wore a jewel of rain.
Smithlao thought of what he had thought in Gunpat's room about the coming end of man. Now he added this rider:
it would be so easy for Nature, when parasite man was extinct, to begin again.
He waited tensely, knowing a fragment of drama was about to take place before his eyes. Across the sparkling lawn,
a tiny tracked thing scuttled, pogo-ing itself up steps and out of sight through an arch. It was a peri-meter guard,
off to give the alarm, to warn that an intruder was about.
In a minute it returned. Four big robots accompanied it; one of them Smithlao recognized as the toad-like machine
that had challenged his arrival. They threaded their way purposefully among the rose bushes, five dif-ferently shaped
menaces. The metal gardener muttered to itself, abandoned its clipping, and joined the proces-sion towards the wild
man.
"He hasn't a dog's chance," Smithlao said to himself. The phrase held significance: all dogs, declared
redundant, had long since been exterminated.
By now the wild man had broken through the barrier of the thicket and come to the lawn's edge. He pulled a leafy
branchlet off a shrub and stuck it into his shirt so that it partially obscured his face; he tucked another branch into his
trousers. As the robots drew nearer, he raised his arms above his head, a third branch clasped in his hands.
The six machines encircled him, humming and chugging quietly.
The toad robot clicked, as if deciding on what it should do next.
25
"Say who you are," it demanded.
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
"I am a rose tree," the wild man said.
"Rose trees bear roses. You do not bear roses. You are not a rose tree," the steel toad said. Its biggest, highest gun
came level with the wild man's chest.
"My roses are dead already," the wild man said, "but I have leaves still. Ask the gardener if you do not know what
leaves are."
"This thing is a thing with leaves," the gardener said at once in a deep voice.
"I know what'leaves are. I have no need to ask the gardener. Leaves are the foliage of trees and plants which give
them their green appearance," the toad said.
"This thing is a thing with leaves," the gardener re-peated, adding, to clarify the matter, "the leaves give it a green
appearance."
"I know what things with leaves are," said the toad. "I have no need to ask you, gardener."
It looked as if an interesting, if limited, argument would break out between the two robots, but at this moment one
of the other machines said something.
"This rose tree can speak," it declared.
"Rose trees cannot speak," the toad said at once. Hav-ing produced this pearl, it was silent, probably mulling over
the strangeness of life. Then it said, slowly, "There-fore either this rose tree is not a rose tree or this rose tree did not
speak."
"This thing is a thing with leaves," began the gardener doggedly. "But it is not a rose tree. Rose trees have
stipules. This thing has no stipules. It is a breaking buckthorn. The breaking buckthorn is also known as the
berry-bearing alder."
This specialized knowledge extended beyond the voca-bulary of the toad. A strained silence ensued.
"I am a breaking buckthorn," the wild man said, still holding his pose. "I cannot speak."
At this, all the machines began to talk at once, lum-bering round him for better sightings as they did so, and
barging into each other in the process. Finally, the toad's voice broke above the metallic babble.
"Whatever this thing with leaves is, we must uproot it. We must kill it," it said.
26
"You may not uproot it. That is only a job for gar-deners," the gardener said. Setting its shears rotating, telescoping
out a mighty scythe, it charged at the toad.
Its crude weapons were ineffectual against the toad's armour. The latter, however, realized that they had reached a
deadlock in their investigations.
"We will retire to ask Charles Gunpat what we shall do," it said. "Come this way."
"Charles Gunpat is in conference," the scout robot said. "Charles Gunpat must not be disturbed in con-ference.
Therefore we must not disturb Charles Gunpat."
"Therefore we must wait for Charles Gunpat," said the metal toad imperturbably. He led the way close by where
Smithlao stood; they all climbed the steps and disappeared into the house in a cloud of syllogisms.
Smithlao could only marvel at the wild man's cool-ness. It was a miracle he still survived. Had he attempted to run,
he would have been killed instantly; that was a situation the robots had been taught to cope with. Nor would his
double talk, inspired as it was, have saved him had he been faced with only one robot, for the robot is a
single-minded creature.
In company, however, they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings : a tendency
to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.
Logic! That was the trouble. It was all robots had to go by. Man had logic and intelligence : he got along better than
his robots. Nevertheless, he was losing the battle against Nature. And Nature, like the robots, used only logic. It was a
paradox against which man could not prevail.
Directly the file of machines had disappeared into the house, the wild man ran across the lawn and climbed the first
flight of steps, working towards the motionless girl. Smithlao slid behind a beech tree to be nearer to them; he felt like
an evil-doer, watching them without an interposed screen, but could not tear himself away; he sensed that here was a
little charade which marked the end of all that Man had been. The wild man was approaching Ployploy now, moving
slowly across the terrace as if hypnotized. 27
She spoke first.
"You were resourceful," she said to him. Her white face carried pink in its cheeks now.
"I have been resourceful for a whole year to get to you," he said. Now his resources had brought him face to face
with her, they failed, and left him standing help-lessly. He was a thin young man, thin and sinewy, his clothes worn,
his beard unkempt. His eyes never left Ployploy's.
"How did you find me?" Ployploy asked. Her voice, unlike the wild man's, barely reached Smithlao. A haunting
look, as fitful as the autumn, played on her face.
"It was a sort of instinct—as if I heard you calling," the wild man said. "Everything that could possibly be wrong
with the world is wrong. . . . Perhaps you are the only woman in the world who loves; perhaps I am the only
man who could answer. So I came. It was natural: I could not help myself."
"I always dreamed someone would come," she said. "And for weeks I have felt—known—you were coming. Oh,
my darling. . . ."
ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.thebeatlesforever.com/processtext/abctxt.html
摘要：

THECANOPYOFTIME"...fantasyratherthansciencefiction:storiesofapathologicallymurderousthrow-backwhomayneverbepermanentlyexecutedinaworldwherethedeadcanberestoredtolife;ofrobotstryingtobuildasocialsystemoftheirownonpurelylogicalprinciples,whichcollapsesforwantofcompassion;ofaboywhoweavesoldmenintohisde...

展开>> 收起<<
Aldiss, Brian - The Canopy of Time.pdf

共77页,预览16页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：77 页 大小：1.32MB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 77
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注